Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections

The expert election* 2025 observation mission was organized by the Belarusian Helsinki Committee and the Viasna Human Rights Center as part of the "Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections" campaign. The mission collects and analyzes information about the election campaign based on open sources and messages from voters from Belarus.

CONCLUSIONS

• There remains a repressive climate of threat, fear-mongering, pressure, and persecution in connection with any civil activity unauthorized by the state. "Preventive conversations" and repeated detentions of people who were active during the previous presidential campaign in 2020 are combined with a demonstration of readiness to harshly suppress any manifestations of disloyalty in this election campaign. This climate of fear negatively affects the chances of "healthy" voter behavior — knowing the repressive consequences of putting signatures in support of candidates other than Aliaksandr Lukashenka in 2020, voters do not want to take the risk of signing in support of anyone in 2024;
• Applications for registration of initiative groups for the nomination of presidential candidates were submitted by 11 people (55 in 2020). The Central Election Commission (CEC) refused to register the initiative groups of Dziyana Kavaliova (due to the insufficient number of members of the initiative group), Aliaksandr Drazdou, and Viktar Kulesh (due to non-compliance with the requirements for the list of members of the initiative group), Yury Hubarevich (due to sending documents by e-mail, which is not explicitly allowed by electoral legislation).
• The CEC has registered 7 initiative groups nominating presidential candidates — Aliaksandr Lukashenka (the current president), Aleh Haidukevich (chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus), Aliaksandr Khizhniak (chairman of the Republican Party of Labor and Justice), Volha Chamadanava (head of the main department of Ideological Work and Youth Affairs of the Minsk City Executive Committee), Hanna Kanapatskaya (individual entrepreneur), Siarhei Bobrykau (chairman of the Republican Council of the public association Belarusian Union of Officers), Siarhei Syrankou (first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus). Later it was announced that V. Chamadanava and S. Bobrykau filed applications for the termination of the work of their initiative groups. None of these candidates came forward as a clear alternative to A. Lukashenka. Rather, they have been planned to act as "sparring partners" who should provide a formal alternative in the ballot.
• Local authorities have slightly expanded the list of places where the collection of signatures of voters in support of the nomination of presidential candidates is prohibited, while there has been some diversity in the interpretation of the Electoral Code. However, given that the elections provide no real alternative and the voter activity is low, reducing the number of signature collection sites did not provoke a reaction from the candidates: no initiative groups complained about problems collecting signatures.
• The preservation in the legislation of the permission to collect signatures on the territories of enterprises and institutions has strengthened the mechanism of administrative coercion to sign in support of A. Lukashenka and, at the same time, in some cases, A. Khizhniak and probably other "sparring partners". Signature collectors often did not present documents; information for signature lists was provided by the personnel departments of state institutions and state-owned enterprises.
• Thus, the collection of signatures took place with serious violations of the standards of free and democratic elections, in a climate of intimidation and coercion. De facto authorities took active measures to prevent any potential civil activity unauthorized by the state. The process of collecting signatures excluded equality of candidates and was aimed at creating a picture of support for only one candidate, A. Lukashenka, with the traditional use of administrative resources and forcing voters to sign in support of his nomination as a candidate. This stage is the most transparent for the executive vertical, when all the signatures and the refusal to sign may become grounds for politically motivated prosecution.
• The territorial election commissions confirmed the collection of the required 100,000 signatures by all five candidates. As before, signature verification took place in an opaque manner and in a very short time, which raises reasonable doubts about the figures' validity.
• Already at this stage, part of a de facto campaigning designed to legitimize the idea of broad voter support for A. Lukashenka is a record-high number of declared signatures and the difference between the allegedly collected signatures in his support (more than 2.5 million signatures, about 35% of all voters) and signatures collected by other candidates (in the range of 112–134 thousand). A special role was assigned to state and pro-government media resources, especially regional newspapers, which essentially focused on campaigning for A. Lukashenka. 
• The CEC registered candidates and issued registration certificates to 5 applicants: Aleh Haidukevich, Anna Kanapatskaya, Aliaksandr Lukashenka, Siarhei Syrankou, Aliaksandr Khizhniak on the very next day after the start of the registration stage, i. e. this is the fastest registration in the history of presidential elections.